An unidentified blacksmith shoes a horse or mule, which has been trussed up because it will not ...

An unidentified blacksmith shoes a horse or mule, which has been trussed up because it will not stand, at the Australian Remount Depot. Two units of 800 men each were originally formed to look after the horses of the AIF mounted divsions that were at Gallipoli; however, when they arrived in Egypt in December 1915, the need no longer existed. Nevertheless the units began work, which involved training and exercising horses and mules, and despatching them to various destinations. Horses were received from Australia, England, France, the United States, Argentina, and Palestine. First permanently sited at Heliopolis, the Depot moved to Moascar in April 1917. While personnel numbers were halved in March 1916 and again reduced later that year, the Depot remained in Egypt for over three years. The work was carried out with very little loss of or injury to the many animals handled. As an illustration of the volume of work, in 1916 around 10,000 horses were received and around 10,000 were despatched. Training was time consuming, as many of the animals that arrived were rather wild and only partly broken; while large numbers of men over 50 originally enlisted in the units, the work turned out to be too strenous for them.